Life.SREDA invests $730,000 in MyWishBoard.com

Russian fund Life.SREDA has invested $730,000 in MyWishBoard.com, which helps users to gather together the money they need to make their wishes come true. As well as helping people to save up their own money towards a specific goal, MyWishBoard also has a social element - it also allows friends and family to contribute funds.

Since it was launched in July 2013 over 500,000 ‘wishes’ have been posted on the site, 21,000 of which have been fully financed. The average value of a ‘wish’ is $120 and in October the site turned over $30,000.

Alexander Ivanov, Life.SREDA’s finance director, commented that

The project had to be particularly special in order to get us to turn back to a Russian project after our investments in US startups earlier this year. The idea is very promising, it’s got a good user interface and the potential to be viral and, crucially, it doesn’t rely on complex infrastructure and integration with banks like many fintech projects, which means that it will be much easier to launch the project abroad.

Ivanov also believes that, although it looks a lot like other wish list projects (such as Smartypig), MyWishBoard’s long term plans make it unique.

The funds will be used to develop and launch a mobile app for iOS and Android, and to promote the service. In the long term Life.SREDA hopes that to expand the project outside of Russia.

The deal was completed in October, but the details were only recently announced. It is quite an unusual investment for Life.SREDA, which is predominantly oriented towards innovative banking startups and has stakes in US projects Moven and Simple, German startup Fidor and Russia's Instabank and LifePay.